


The Unthinkable Can Come True

by HiLarpItsCat



Series: Lilith's Lullaby [1]
Category: Scion (Tabletop RPG)
Genre: TBD AU, TBD Dark!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-03 21:32:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6627283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HiLarpItsCat/pseuds/HiLarpItsCat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A TBD Scion Dark!AU. What if Evie hadn't been acquitted in her trial?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Unthinkable Can Come True

_I believe the unthinkable can come true_  
_If you want it to_  
_I am capable of anything and so are you_  
_If no one's watching you_

_I can't help the things I do_  
_Well, is that true?_  
_Then every man for himself_  
_All against you and god against all_

_I am capable of anything and so are you_  
_The world encourages you_  
_Who is watching, who is guarding who_  
_I am warning you_

_I believe the unthinkable will come true_  
_And I'm watching you_  
_Every man for himself_  
_All against you and God against_

_Taking revenge upon the world, I am trying to_  
_Take revenge upon the world, I am trying to_  
_Everything will happen just as I've predicted_  
_But I'm not yet finished_

_I think you can feel the times we run through_  
_Are a net tightening in on you_  
_I think you can tell what I'm telling you_  
_Is more or less true_  
_I think you know what I want you to do_  
_And it's toll on you_  
_Don't you?_  
_Don't you?_

_I think the unthinkable has come true_  
_Just look at you_  
_You are capable of anything, aren't you_  
_I'm so proud of you_

_You can't help the things you do, can you?_  
_Every man for himself_  
_All against you and God against all_  
      ---"M is for Morphine," The World/Inferno Friendship Society 

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

The cars parted before her like supplicants, their drivers hardly noticing that they were even doing so. The city lay ahead of her: stiff, unyielding, but so, so fragile. 

The wind whipped through her hair, carrying the scent of metal and struggle. To her, it smelled like kindling. Yes, the convertible was a good choice after all, she thought. It wasn't as though the cold bothered her. Not anymore. 

Around her, snow began to fall. She threw back her head and laughed. 

It was good to be home.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1985

She remembered the last day she felt warm.

It was right after the jury had conferred. They reassembled, none of them meeting her eye. The Speaker pronounced the verdict.

"Evangelina Vane, Scion of Frigg of the Aesir, we find you guilty of complicity in the attempted escape of the prisoners of the inner prison. In light of the evidence--"

"--there was no evidence!" Becca cried, jumping to her feet. 

The Speaker fixed her with a gaze, and Becca slowly sat down again. The Speaker resumed: "In light of the evidence, the Conclave hereby sentences you to death. You will have three days to prepare yourself, while remaining in the custody of the Scion of Ptah."

Evie looked at Hank, standing silently against the wall. His face betrayed nothing.

She looked at Becca and understood: this was the end.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

The roads had turned slick. She passed accident after accident on the highway leading into the city. She could feel the pull of the prison hidden at its core. No voices on the edge of her hearing, though. She would have to get closer. 

But first, she had some errands to run.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1985

She wasn't sure how Frigg had managed it, but there she was. Flanked by her attendants, in the mortal world she was hard to even look at through the dazzle. But there was no mistaking her. First among the Asynjur, now manifest on earth.

And furious.

It was as though they all talked at once. Unjustly accused. Insolence. Disrespect. Cruelty. And above it all: this was not foreseen. This could not be.

They turned on Loki's Scion. His doing, they proclaimed. Tainted. Corrupted.

And then as one, they spoke: We remove ourselves. We withdraw from the Conclave. 

Everything seemed to explode all at once.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

There was a fence around Becca's house now.

A sign posted at the gate read: trespassers will be destroyed.

She smiled as she drove past the house. She did not stop. Things were going so well.

* * *

#### Elsewhere, 1985

Brackish water was now seeping into Frigg's chambers. The wood warped and sagged. Fensalir was collapsing in on itself. So was its mistress. 

Frigg now talked to no one but instead spent her days scrying incessantly. She murmurred to herself now and then, pleading with an unseen image. 

For the first time, Frigg was afraid of the future. 

Her attendants faded and vanished. Rooms disappeared. The smell of rotting wood was everywhere. 

The day after Evie left Fensalir, the swamp froze. Frigg never noticed.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

MD's building had gotten even taller. Everything in its shadow had been reduced to ash.

In the distance, she could see the lights from Hank's penthouse. Not yet, she told herself. 

From the next block over, she heard gunfire.

* * *

#### Kvitøya, 1985

Fensalir did not connect with the mortal world easily, or consistently. Evie stumbled out onto an expanse of ice. It was night and bitter cold. Only the occasional rock broke up the monotony. 

Climbing higher, she could see waves of the sea in the distance. Floating in it, like herd animals, were icebergs. 

She saw no signs of human habitation.

She was going to die.

"You don't have to," came a hushed sound from beneath her feet. 

She knew what was speaking to her. It was more eloquent than the Titans of Chicago she had guarded.

"Yes, unfortunate, that prison" the ice whispered. "But we are vast, endless. We can afford to be generous... if the circumstances are right."

She was going to die. But she didn't have to.

She remembered what she told Frigg when they first met: "I wasn't ready to go."

"Yes," the ice whispered again.

The next thing she had said to Frigg: "I'll take the job if it means getting a second chance."

Evie knelt on the ice and began to scratch runes into the ice. 

Her name was her first offering to them. They devoured it greedily.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

She sat on a bench near the Library and waited. 

The prisoners below her feet waited too. 

A girl with messy hair had wandered up from the subway on Dearborn, looking dazed. 

"Come, sit," she said to the girl, patting the spot next to her on the bench. Confused, the girl sat and let her oversized bag drop to the sidewalk in front of her.

"You never knew your father," she began. "You never wanted to, until you found yourself on a bus to Chicago, a bus you don't remember getting on. Then that's all you could think about. You look for him in the street, on the train, in the stores and restaurants that you can't afford. You don't even know what you're looking for, not really. But still you look. You feel like you're circling a drain, waiting for an epiphany that will never come."

The girl's eyes had widened, but she did not speak. Could not speak.

"Well, I have news for you: there is no epiphany. He's never going to come for you. You were a mistake, an unintended result of too much power and not enough empathy. But you came here looking anyway, because he made you."

She took the girl's hand. It was warm, but cooling quickly. 

"I know you must be angry. You feel that tiny shard in your heart. You think it's want. Or need. Or destiny. It's none of those things. It's hate. And you know what?" She squeezed the girl's hand encouragingly. "The feeling is mutual. The gods hate us."

The girl's mouth fell open, slackly. As if in a dream, the girl whispered. "What do I do?"

"Their blood. I can unlock it for you. I can give you the ability to shape yourself into what you wish to be."

"Anything?" the girl asked.

"Anything."

The girl seemed to solidify. Her eyes focused. "Powerful," the girl said. 

"Yes."

"How?"

"Come with me," she said. "It's a short walk."

As they stood, the girl said, "I'm Wendy."

"If you want to be."

"What do I call you?" Wendy asked.

She gave Wendy a smile. "Call me Lilith."

* * *

#### Outside of Alta, 1986

The dam on the Alta river was nearly complete. The protests were long in the past and the new lake was reflecting the last rays of the sun in red and gold. 

Later, the Norwegian government would blame Sami activists for the explosion. 

It was said that you could feel the earth shaking under your feet for hundreds of miles away. 

Well, she thought, watching the cold earth flexing its muscles, that was easier than she thought it would be.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

She was already in Dr. Bonnemaison's office when he turned on the light.

They barely needed to talk, even though they did anyway. They understood one another perfectly.

* * *

#### Dublin, 1986

Ellis had been so glad at first. He had gotten word of the trial and the verdict, but had heard nothing since then. Chicago had gone very quiet. After Frigg withdrew from the Conclave, the rest of the Aesir (minus Loki's Scion) had followed. The Conclave was a mere skeleton of its former self. Even over here, alliances were breaking apart. So many were either dying or vanishing lately, he thought that she had been one of the casualties.

But then he touched her freezing skin and looked into her cold eyes and knew what had happened.

"Evie--"

"That name isn't mine anymore," she said. She smiled at him. "You know I can offer you a choice."

"Tried that, darling," Ellis said. "Once upon a time. Didn't work out."

She saw his stance shift and felt the energy gathering around him.

Poor Ellis. He underestimated her again.

How strange, she thought afterwards while dumping his body into the Liffey, she didn't really feel sad about it. In fact, she felt sort of relieved.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

This must be the place, she thought, sitting outside a cafe on Clark Street. The street festival had only opened its gates twenty minutes ago, but there were already crowds of people moving past her on their way to sample Swedish pastries and drinks.

She let herself feel the rhythm of the crowds, the twisting strings of fate. It used to be that sensing those connections was all that she could do. She could pull those strings now. 

Then she saw him: about eight or nine years old, blond, with large round glasses. He looked lost.

She beckoned with a finger. He approached her without fear. 

“Would you like to see something wonderful?” she asked him. He nodded, and took her offered hand in his. She led him away to some place more quiet.

She almost changed her mind when she saw how valiantly he struggled when her hands closed around his throat. He would have been a good fighter. But she had seen his future; this way was far better. Little Knut would escape so much tragedy this way.

* * *

#### Elsewhere, 1986

She didn’t think she would be able to make it back across to Fensalir. It was almost unrecognizable now. Moss grew over whatever had not rotted away, and parts of the fens were frozen crystals. Frigg was nowhere to be seen. 

Making her way to the heart of the realm, she found what she was looking for.

Like letting insects out of a box, she opened the way into the Bifröst and the Jötnar swarmed across it, heading for Asgard.

She didn’t follow them. She had other places to be.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

She waited to talk to the Commander until after she had already shot him through the chest with mistletoe. He would probably take awhile to die anyway.

“Has life outside the Conclave been everything you’ve dreamed it would be?” she asked absently, stepping over his body and heading toward his kitchen. 

“I knew it...” he rasped through the blood now pooling in his throat. “I knew there was something… the verdict…”

“Oh Johnny,” she said disappointed, rifling through the drawers in the kitchen, “that’s the irony of the whole thing: I wasn’t, back then. Afterwards, though… well, belief is a funny thing. And you _did_ all believe that I was in league with them, so…”

“The Bifröst…” he said, picking himself up on one elbow. The spear was still in his chest.

She began looking through the hall closets. “Only a very minor role. And cheer up: Heimdall held them off beautifully. For the time being, of course.”

The Commander began dragging himself across the floor.

“So how many are left?” she asked, pulling a tool box out of one of the closets and setting it on the kitchen counter. “Not just in the Conclave, I mean; how many Scions are left in Chicago in general?”

“Fuck… off…”

“I assume there aren’t many left,” she said, sorting through the tools. “Any of the ones left in the Conclave have retreated into their own little worlds. And without any new Scions being Visited, well… that’s a lot of talent out there going to waste.” She looked at him sadly and sighed. “I can offer you a choice, but I think we both know what your answer is going to be.”

He spit at her but missed. She barely noticed. Taking the guard off of a small hacksaw, she walked back to him. 

“Don’t worry about this,” she said, indicating the saw. “That’s for later.”

“They’ll stop you,” he gasped in pain as she drew the mistletoe spear out of his chest wound. 

“Too bad, so sad…” she sang softly. “Bye, Johnny,” she said, shoving the spear through his left eye socket. It took surprisingly little force before it was stopped by the back of his skull.

She wished she had a bigger hacksaw, but this would have to do.

* * *

#### Wherever, 1986

She knew where to find them. The ones who had received their Visitation and said no. The ones who had washed out. The ones who would never be visited. 

She offered them a choice. Miss your second chance, or take the job. 

She must have been convincing. Most of them said yes.

* * *

#### Chicago, 1987

Trying to sneak into Hank’s penthouse was pointless, so she used the front door.

He wouldn’t kill her, not right away. He did so love the sound of his own voice.

“I heard you had returned,” he said, looking relaxed and unperturbed a the sofa in his study. One wall was nothing but glass, commanding an excellent view of the city. “Come to make me an offer, I assume?”

“Oh Hank,” she said sweetly, taking a seat on a chair opposite him. “It’s been so long.”

“You would rather we catch up?” he asked, arching a perfect eyebrow. “I would really rather not, if it’s all the same to you.”

She shrugged. “All right. So you think you know why I’m here.”

“You came to ask if I would throw in my lot with you and yours, failing to remember that I’ve been on this little carousel before.”

“No,” she said, getting comfortable on the couch. “That’s not why I came.”

“Oh?” He almost sounded disappointed. “Then why?”

“To make sure you would be here when it happened,” she said with a smile. 

The building rattled. A tremendous noise could be heard down below. Hank reached for a button on a side table, but paused when he saw the gun in her hand.

“Oh come now,” he said with a laugh. “Do you really think I’d be afraid of that?”

“Not everything is about you, Hank,” she said, and fired the gun. It shattered the wall of glass behind him. Not enough to break apart but enough to form cracks. 

She leaped at him as he stood, slamming him back against the glass. It splintered further, but held.

He gave her a grin. “Bulletproof glass, of course,” he said.

She rested a hand against the window. “Of course,” she echoed. Frost crept across the glass, expanding the cracks. 

As they fell in a shower of glass and ice, she looked down at her handiwork. Little Wendy, and the others like her, had done their job well. Fire and fury ripped through the Loop, collapsing buildings, crumbling the El tracks, blowing craters into the ground.

From those craters, the earth was rising up. 

She laughed for joy as she rushed down to meet it.


End file.
